I blog here and there.

How to be yourself in an application in 5 easy steps

If you’re reading this post with the intention of learning what the title suggests, I regret to inform you that you’ve come to the wrong place.

Here’s why.

Small companies, especially the newer ones, are becoming more selective as candidates are gaining more and more experience in today’s day and age. They want you to stand out. More importantly, they want you to be yourself.

We’re becoming a generation of self-taught creators, do-ers, gurus, professionals, and specialists in fields that we may not have even learnt from a formal educational system.

It’s becoming a bit of a trend for companies, and particularly the hip new start-ups, to include more freedom in the structure of an application. The days of your cover letter regurgitating your resume are changing into something more personal, more relatable.

This is what gets people stuck. University students have processes and guidelines set in their minds, and I don’t blame them. That’s how we were taught to get to the results we want.

We are more interested in finding creative, motivated and driven teammates that would be a great fit for ReSoMe and are truly passionate about social media than finding people that have bullet points on a resume.

To me, this sounds a lot like:

“Send us a sample of who you actuallyare.”

After speaking with the head recruiter from Shopify, it seems that this point is translated into the first interviews as well. He’d rather see you show you’re slightly nervous, than overcompensate. The cookie cutter-ed business profesional version so many candidates put on before an interview often lacks an important aspect : personality.

So, there really are no 5 steps that will get you to be more yourself. You would know that more so than any blog post would.